at do th' hens do?"

"They clock" (hatch).

"Pavin' stones?"

"I didn't say pavin' stones!"

"Oh, aye," she laughed loudly.

"Luk here," Jamie said, "I want t' laugh too. Now what th' ---- is't yer
gigglin' at?"

I explained.

He smiled and said:

"Jazus, bhoy, that reminds me ov Anna, she cud say more funny things
than aany wan I iver know'd."

"And that reminds me," I said, "that the word you have just misused
_she_ always pronounced with a caress!"

"Aye, I know rightly, but ye know I mane no harm, don't ye?"

"I know, but you remember when _she_ used that word every letter in it
was dressed in its best Sunday clothes, wasn't it?"

"Och, aye, an' I'd thravel twinty miles jist t' hear aany wan say it
like Anna!"

"Well, I have traveled tens of thousands of miles and I have heard the
greatest preachers of the age, but I never heard any one pronounce it so
beautifully!"

"But as I was a-sayin' bhoy, I haaven't had a rale good laugh since she
died; haave I, Mary?"

"I haaven't naither," Mary said.

"Aye, but ye've had double throuble, dear."

"We never let trouble rob us of laughter when I was here."

"Because whin ye wor here she was here too. In thim days whin throuble
came she'd tear it t' pieces an' make fun ov aych piece, begorra. Ye
might glour an' glunch, but ye'd haave t' laugh before th' finish--shure
ye wud!"

The neighbors began to knock again. Some of the knocks were vocal and as
plain as language. Some of the more familiar gaped in the window.

"Hes he hed 'is bath yit?" asked McGrath, the ragman.

We opened the door and in marched the inhabitants of our vicinity for
the second "crack."

This right of mine own people to come and go as they pleased suggested
to me the thought that if I wanted to have a private conversation with
my father I would have to take him to another town.

The following day we went to the churchyard together--Jamie and I. Over
her grave he had dragged a rough boulder and on it in a straggling,
unsteady, amateur hand were painted her initials and below them his own.
He was unable to speak there, and maybe it was just as well. I knew
everything he wanted to say. It was written on his deeply furrowed face.
I took his arm and led him away.

Our next call was at Willie Withero's stone-pile. There, when I
remembered the nights that I passed in my new world of starched linen,
too good to shoulder a bundle of his old hammers, I was filled with
remorse. I uncov